The clock has run out on Democrats’ chaotic closing midterm message, as the party loses four seats and trails both parties. | Getty Dems’ midterms message so out of whack, so out of whack: What’s next?
Democrats desperately needed a message to make their midterm congressional victories last, and they were almost entirely bereft of one.
After a year of winning the generic ballot in key midterm contests, Republicans now look like the party most concerned with the future of the Supreme Court and other issues of national importance, especially after the GOP’s victory in Virginia; it is the party of the middle class, just not the one they say they are.
As Republicans try to put their party back on track, Democrats were also forced to take a moment to reflect on the midterms, which saw their party lose five seats (including two in Virginia), fall further behind in the generic ballot, flip a couple of seats, and lose the governor’s race in Virginia.
“I don’t think the House lost in the way the media was portraying it, because we won by about 600,000 votes [after Election Day],” Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) told POLITICO. “I don’t think Democrats in the Senate lost by 400,000 votes.”
Moulton said Democrats lost the state of Virginia, which he thought their party could have won, in part because of voter apathy:
“The [voter] turnout rates were terrible for Virginia Democratic candidates, and we didn’t have the candidate, the energy, or the message that drove voter turnout.”
And in Minnesota, where Democrats thought the party could have won, the two parties finished with the same amount of support after the results came in:
“It’s a good learning experience for Democrats,” Moulton said. “But it also is a